Dubois vs Wardley

It's the fight of the Spring 2026 with Inoue / Nakatani and Takuma Inoue / Kazuto Ioka for me.

I think Dubois can make the surprise here, I'm not convicted by the defense of Wardley.

 

I can certainly agree to this,some other fighters just seem to have a knack of pulling victory from the jaws of defeat, say for example A Lee v Koborov and A Lee v J Jackson Jnr .

 

I watched the face off today between Wardley/Dubois and Wardley pretty much said the samething.

He said Dubois has shown toughness before in fights but if he doesn't believe he can win during the fight and he falls behind he can mentally check out and that's what happened vs Usyk.

Wardley has already turned a fight around he was losing pretty heavily vs Huni.

And even against Parker Wardley was behind by quite a significant margin and comeback and won.

So Wardley is definitely mentally tougher than Dubois IMO and that's why i'm slightly favouring Wardley.

But Wardley has never been in there with a puncher like Dubois, so whilst he is mentally tough Dubois could crack his chin and Wardley's defence isn't the best.

 

I've got experience in combat sports mate. Some people can whack, others can't. Some have solid chins/resilience, others don't.

 

I never said he was a "KO master", only that he hits harder than Hrgovic/Miller.

 

Dubois will team up with Father Time and KO Usyk in the 3rd fight.

 

Failing that, Frank will give Dubios a 4th attempt next year.

 

Fascinating Match up!

I should know better than betting against wardley by now but I really feel like Dubois “should” take this, the jab/double jab is the key imo, if he can stick to that and keep concentration I think he finds the shots

 

Do you think Wardley was that far behind against Parker? I think I had it level going into the round before the stoppage.

 

He was behind on the cards (in england !! ) and i had him behind at least as much. He would have lost without a few knockdowns. And the stoppage was certainly with intentions behind.

Wardley might have still stopped Parker, but the last few punches he threw had already lost power and precision compared to before and it showed by none of them hitting parker cleanly and him moving his body into the punches with more effort. So while parker was exhausted, wardley likely would have dropped his output and then it probably would not have been enough for the ko.

But on the other hand he did the right thing. Gave himself a chance of winning when he saw that parkers output had dropped to zero, because parker paced himself miserably, hoping to knock wardley out with his equally miserable punching technique (see slow motions)

My assumption is that had huni not been knocked out against wardley, he would have won against parker, too. And then huni against usyk i would enjoy watching. Different kind of Challenge to usyk.

 

Yeah, I agree with you there. I totally disagreed with the stoppage. I had it dead even, maybe I have to rewatch it, I know most people had Parker up by 1 or 2 points, but I didn't think he was that far ahead.

I think only one of the last seven punches Wardley threw before the stoppage actually landed, and it didn't land flush. Huni put in an amazing performance vs Wardley, but his performance vs Clarke makes me think Usyk would have made him look stupid, which there's no shame in; there's nobody at HW who beats Usyk at the moment.

 

I had it 6-4 going into the 11th round so if Parker did survive the 11th round. Wardley could've won a decision on my card because the 11th round was a 10-8 round for me even without a knockdown.

But the judges had it wider and so did quite a few people in the RBR so I think on the official scorecards Wardley needed a stoppage.

 

I think huni might at least be fun to look at. If boxing has noone to beat usyk then i want his opponents to challenge different skills in usyk. Like i dont want a musician to do super similar songs all the time. Huni would be the speedster/amateur style for a change.

And i think kabayel might be interesting.

But noone wins against him without him aging a bit more.

 

This is what I'm interested in seeing with this fight. Wardley has this bad habit when he's getting tagged of just turning his head away instead of moving and/or getting his gloves up. Both Huni and Parker were able to tee off on him in spots because of it. It's not quite as bad as Ryan Garcia literally turning his back to the opponent like a complete goof, but it's definitely not well thought out defense.

I fear that if Wardley does that with Dubois he's gonna get himself into serious trouble.